Military Bloggers Offer a Grunt's Eye View of Iraq

Spc. Colby Buzzell's squad was on a mission in a poor neighborhood in Mosul when two Iraqi boys ran up carrying old artillery shells. "Give me dollar!" they said.

Another came carrying bullets and demanding money.

"Then, all of a sudden, this really skinny Iraqi kid comes running up to us with a ... HAND GRENADE in his hand," Buzzell wrote on his war blog. " 'Drop the ... hand grenade! Drop it now!' We all started yelling. The little kid, still with this proud smile on his face that said, 'Look what I just found,' just dropped the grenade on the ground, and walked over to my squad leader and said, 'Give me money!' "

The grenade didn't go off.

The squad leader explained to his men that an Army division that had been in the area earlier had paid children for weapons or unexploded ordnance.

For Buzzell, it was grist for his online war diary, http://cbftw.blogspot.com, whose fans range from soccer moms and truck drivers to punk band leader Jello Biafra. Before the counter dropped off the site, Buzzell says, he was getting 5,000 hits a day.

Iraq war blogs are as varied as the soldiers who write them. Some sites feature practical news, pictures and advice. Some are overtly political, with more slanting to the right more than to the left. Some question the war, some cheer it.

Buzzell and a handful of others write unvarnished war reporting. A few of these blogs have been shut down, and Buzzell, an infantryman in an Army Stryker brigade, says he was banned from missions for five days because of the blog and has stopped adding new entries.

For the folks back home, soldier blogs offer details of war that don't make it into most news dispatches: The smell of rotten milk lingering in a poor neighborhood. The shepherd boys standing at the foot of a guard tower yelling requests for toothbrushes and sweets. The giant camel spiders. The tedium of long walks to get anything, from a shower to a meal. A burning oil refinery a hundred miles away blocking the sun. A terrifying night raid by armed enemies.

On the blogs, soldiers complain, commiserate and celebrate their victories and ingenuity.

What do you do if the electricity goes out while you're sitting in the latrine, leaving you in complete darkness with a dead flashlight? Blog answer: Reach into your cargo pocket and crack open a Chemlight.